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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 5, 2022

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I've learned to be distrustful of mainstream conservative commentators, but I still had hope that Dennis Prager was one of the intellectually honest ones. Having read his latest column, my disappointment is immeasurable, and my day is ruined.

I understand that accusing someone of intellectual dishonesty without clear evidence that they are lying is frowned upon here and likely anywhere else that meaningful discussion happens. If anyone has a defensible reading of this column, I would greatly appreciate hearing it, because I can only see two possible readings.

  1. The subject of the holocaust hits so close to home for Prager that he suspends all rational thought when discussing it, leaving him incapable of recognizing his own hypocrisy or recusing himself to avoid embarassment.

  2. He is consciously trying to enforce a norm that you can't question anything about the holocaust; he is aware that this contradicts his encouragement of vaccine hesitancy and other forms of wrongthink, but he doesn't care, because those are forms of wrongthink he likes, and this is one he doesn't like.

The first possibility fills me with pity. The second one fills me with outrage, not only because I consider that attitude to be morally wrong, but because I consider it to be counter-productive. The best way to encourage holocaust denial, and the anti-Semitism that it so often leads to, is to tell people not to question any details about it. And I'm not exaggerating when I say that Prager does not want people to question any details about it whatsoever. He says so himself.

Yet, some people, including an American named Nick Fuentes, aggressively deny the Holocaust, asserting that a few hundred thousand Jews, not millions, were killed.

Prager does not define the holocaust as "the German government's mass-murder of Jewish citizens," or even "the deliberate attempt by the German government to kill all of the Jews in Europe." He defines the holocaust specifically as the murder of millions of Jews, meaning that if you put the death toll at anything under 7 figures, you are denying the totality of the event in his mind. If Prager was giving a live lecture, I would excuse this implication as an accidental result of speaking off-the-cuff, but this is a written column, which means he had the opportunity to proof-read his words and think about what they mean, and he still thought that this was acceptable.

Based on my conversations with others about holocaust denial and revisionism, I suspect there's an unspoken implication in this column that people who are neurotypical (or just not autistic in the same way I am) are capable of picking up on: that anyone who questions any detail about the holocaust is a bad faith actor trying to Ship of Theseus it out of the historical record. I've had many people, even in ratspace, tell me that this is so obvious a reason to ostracize holocaust revisionists that it doesn't even have to be stated explicitly when condemning them. Well, not only is it not obvious to me, but I think it takes an astonishingly poor imagination to think that there might not be anyone out there who, in good faith and without denying Hitler's genocidal ambitions, questions how many people were killed in the holocaust or what methods were used.

This is not a defense of Nick Fuentes. While I can't read Fuentes's mind, I have inferred based on his tone when speaking about the holocaust that he likely either doesn't believe it happened or wants other people to not believe it happened. The column, however, is not about Nick Fuentes. It's a column about the general subject of holocaust "denial," and it merely uses Fuentes as an example. And while I'm at it..

Second, Holocaust denial is not only a Big Lie; it is pure Jew-hatred, i.e., antisemitism. The proof that it emanates from antisemitism is that no other 20th-century genocide is denied (with the exception of the Turkish government’s denial of the Turks’ mass murder of Armenians during World War I). No one denies Stalin’s mass murder of tens of millions of Soviet citizens in the Gulag Archipelago or his deliberate starvation of about five million Ukrainians (the Holodomor); or the Cambodian communists’ murder of about one in every four Cambodians; or Mao’s killing of about 60 million Chinese. The only genocide-denial is the genocide of the Jews.

Prager, buddy, do you have any idea how many people on my university campus alone denied "Stalin’s mass murder of tens of millions of Soviet citizens in the Gulag Archipelago?" I don't, because once you're counting in the dozens, it's impossible to keep track without administering a structured survey. I know that Bob Avakian's group canvassed there every day for years without incident, while right-wing events were met with hostile protests. I was one of the first people to know that Quentin Tarantino spoke at one of their events, but it took Breitbart a month to report on my tip, and not a single other outlet picked up on it because they didn't care.

What world does Prager live in where Stalin apologists are marginalized, but holocaust denial runs free? It's not the world he lived in five years ago, because 3 minutes into this video, he approvingly quotes a professor's statement that denial Stalin's genocide is common. Did Prager's assessment of the culture change over the past five years, or is he just contradicting himself to effectively enforce his preferred censorial norms? I'm inclined to think the latter, and it's a darn shame. I used to be a Ben Shapiro fan until I caught him doing stuff like this, and my search for people who recognized the problems with wokeness without enforcing their own intellectual taboos drove me further right to places like VDare and Unz, because they were less obviously dishonest. Several years later, I don't think those places are particularly honest, but I'm sure they're more honest than Daily Wire, and I expect many people to get stuck at that level of the radicalization rabbit hole without graduating to the general agnosticism and confusion I'm at. Shit, now I'm getting emotional.

Also, whoever chose that headline did a bad job. Prager is Jewish, and his reference to hell in the column was clearly meant to be a figure of speech. Making it the headline makes it sound literal. I wonder if Prager approved it.

Well, not only is it not obvious to me, but I think it takes an astonishingly poor imagination to think that there might not be anyone out there who, in good faith and without denying Hitler's genocidal ambitions, questions how many people were killed in the holocaust or what methods were used...

... he writes, after implying that the total death toll was fewer than a million.

I'm going to echo @2rafa's thoughts here: of course this amounts to Holocaust denial. But I'd like to point out something else in this kind of argumentation. You say that claiming only a few hundred thousand Jews dying would not amount to "denying Hitler's genocidal ambitions", but if this claim was actually accepted, or merely allowed to exist as a hypothetical, am I to believe that this would not then change? After all, if it was only half a million Jews who died, well then that would be roughly similar to the number of German civilians who died via the Allied strategic bombing campaign, or the number of ethnic Germans who died in the ethnic cleansing campaigns in Eastern Europe in 1944-46. That would be particularly rhetorically useful to a prospective Holocaust denier: to equivocate between the slaughter of Jews and the killings of Germans, or even to suggest that while the Jews did suffer, Germans were disproportionately and unequally punished for this (which was generally speaking the prevailing public opinion in immediate post-war West Germany). Hell, given the rough-and-tumble nature of total war it would be natural then to suggest the Holocaust wasn't deliberate, but an unfortunate, regrettable, violent episode in a war full of them.

I'm much too well-versed in the rhetorical style and strategies of Holocaust deniers not to get a lot of red flags popping in my brain as I read this post. There's been a lot of this kind of bullshit this past few weeks, and I hope it's not a sign themotte.org is turning into the internet's #1 haven for witches.

he writes, after implying that the total death toll was fewer than a million

What?? I don't understand where you're getting that, but I don't want to argue with it because it feels like a distraction.

After all, if it was only half a million Jews who died, well then that would be roughly similar to the number of German civilians who died via the Allied strategic bombing campaign, or the number of ethnic Germans who died in the ethnic cleansing campaigns in Eastern Europe in 1944-46.

It would not be similar to the civilian casualties of war. War is morally complicated in a way that straight genocide isn't. As for your second example, I wasn't aware that there was a genocide that took place against ethnic Germans, but if such a thing did happen and was deliberately orchestrated by the government of whatever European country this took place in, then I do think it is morally equivalent to the Holocaust. That doesn't, however, mean it warrants as much attention as the Holocaust. The Holocaust is exceptionally well-documented by the very people who perpetrated it, and there are also thousands of hours of recorded interviews with survivors. The ethnic cleansing you speak of here is presumably less well-documented because I haven't even heard of it.

Germans were disproportionately and unequally punished for this

To my knowledge, their only punishment is living in a country where "hate speech" is illegal, and every Western country except America has unfortunately been given this punishment.

Hell, given the rough-and-tumble nature of total war it would be natural then to suggest the Holocaust wasn't deliberate,

They were put in camps, for Pete's sake! The camps are still standing! How can people be accidentally put in camps? I know you're trying to play devil's advocate, but I can't even follow the devil's advocacy you're doing.

I'm much too well-versed in the rhetorical style and strategies of Holocaust deniers not to get a lot of red flags popping in my brain as I read this post.

If I have to accept the label of Holocaust denier to have this discussion, then fine. I don't care. My point is that I don't understand why getting details wrong about a historical event is a moral failing and that people who do it should be "damned to hell." I also don't understand how someone could feel that way about the Holocaust, then turn around and express other taboo ideas without any cognitive dissonance. Dennis Prager is viewed by many leftists in prominent positions in the same way that he views people who underestimate the death toll of the Holocaust.

Again, I apologize if I'm making less sense now. This is one of the few subjects that makes me really emotional, and when I'm emotional, I don't make as much sense as I otherwise would. But that's why I need to talk about this, and there aren't any other places for me to talk about it.

If I have to accept the label of Holocaust denier to have this discussion, then fine. I don't care. My point is that I don't understand why getting details wrong about a historical event is a moral failing and that people who do it should be "damned to hell."

Depends on kind of detail. Bunch of Germans tried to murder/enslave my gradfathers and grandmothers and my entire ethic group. My parents lived in area "liberated" by Red Army fighting with their former ally. Nowadays Russia is invading neighbour country and accusing them of rampant Nazism. (It degenerated into ukro-jewish-nazi-satanism-sim3cardinism since that time).

See also a related "mistake"

It is kind of thing where historical inaccuracy has a real chance to end with me being dead/oppressed/enslaved. Got significantly lower as Russia fails in Ukraine and Germany fails to spend this promised 100 000 000 000 euro for military. But still, that is likely one of easiest ways to get a lot of people irritated and scared.

Though I would reserve "damned to hell" for denialists of communist/nazi mass murder.

I don't understand what you're saying. Are you saying that historical inaccuracy will get people killed because people will misidentify who Nazis are and use that as an excuse to invade nearby territory?

Not necessarily "will get" but it helps to enable this.

It also increases risk of this happening again.

Again, I apologize if I'm making less sense now. This is one of the few subjects that makes me really emotional, and when I'm emotional, I don't make as much sense as I otherwise would. But that's why I need to talk about this, and there aren't any other places for me to talk about it.

I'm actually going to back off and apologize here. In general I take a very dim view of anybody who comes out with the "what do we really know about the Holocaust" shtick because 9 times out of 10 they're deniers in disguise. With your response I think I overreacted and you're not actually a denier (though it did bring some out of the weeds). Something like acknowledging that the Germans were quite fastidious in documenting the murder of Jews is something deniers typically never cop to. So I'm sorry I was overly dismissive of your concerns.

If I have to accept the label of Holocaust denier to have this discussion, then fine. I don't care. My point is that I don't understand why getting details wrong about a historical event is a moral failing and that people who do it should be "damned to hell."

I think @Nantafiria gets to the heart of it. I would also add that in the contemporary context Holocaust deniers almost uniformly fall into one of two camps: white nationalists and Muslims. Both deny the Holocaust for obvious ideologically-motivated reasons, and people find it both crass and dangerous in this respect, because the ultimate aim of the denial is to again build support for violent ethnic cleansing.

That Holocaust denial gets more attention than any other historical genocide I think is mostly a product of the number of Jews in America, their relative influence/prominence, and of course the cultural soft power of the USA. But it is also history's largest genocide (in so far as the word can be rigorously defined) and perhaps also its most unique with respect to the extent and sophistication to which it was pursued.

I understand that Holocaust denial can be motivated by anti-Semitism, and obviously the desire to murder Jews is motivated by anti-Semitism (in conjunction with other pathological traits), but I don't know that one necessarily leads to the other. If someone is motivated to deny the Holocaust, that implies a recognition that the Holocaust was a bad, right? If somebody thinks it was a good thing, wouldn't they prefer to claim that it happened? But I'm speaking of psychological territory I'm unfamiliar with. I only empathize with Holocaust revisionism and denial when they are motivated by contrarianism and a disdain for ideological taboos, because that's the kind of person I am. I don't know if you've read this Richard Hanania post, but it sums up my feelings well if you replace "pronouns" with "morally castigating anyone who asks questions about a specific historical event, especially if you don't do the same with different historical events" and add the caveat that I think the p̶r̶o̶n̶o̶u̶n̶s̶ castigation will increase the chances of a genocide.

This is kind of a tangent, but my reaction to the alt-right over the years has continually been "well, they have legitimate grievances and are being treated unfairly," and I didn't feel a twinge of genuine fear about the possibility of another holocaust (or widespread pogroms) until I saw Nick Fuentes and Kanye West team-up for an interview tour and possible presidential campaign. I still think the odds of it happening are low, but they get higher every time "the Jewish media" takes action against Kanye. Look at this video, and look at the comments. Jonathan's behavior isn't just wrong, but it's creating the enemy he claims to be afraid of. And sometimes I think that he knows this, and is doing it deliberately so that he has something to fight. It's like an exterminator who breeds rats and strategically places them in local businesses so that he can be hired later to kill them. But what happens when the rats (anti-Semites in this analogy) start reproducing too fast for the exterminator to keep up? Has Greenblatt considered that a possibility?

Okay, tangent over. Thank you for explaining why you think the Holocaust is treated with more reverence than other genocides. I think that what you're describing is actually similar to the point that Kanye was trying to make before Nick Fuentes started whispering in his ear: that Jews aren't morally inferior to gentiles, but their overrepresentation in the media leads to a degree of unintentional bias, such as overlooking the death toll of communism. As I've said before on this sub, it's similar to the (valid!) complaint feminists make that when men are in positions of power, they tend not to think about the needs of women. I advocate meritocracy, so to me, the solution isn't removing Jews from power, as Fuentes has taught Kanye. The solution is asking people to be aware of their biases and listen to people outside of their group. Kanye is past that now, and so are the people listening to him, and so I fear for the future. Not too much, but enough that I feel compelled to voice this fear. (Or maybe I'm just afraid to admit the extent to which I fear a resurgence of pogroms because it would make my priorities seem ridiculous.)

I don't understand why getting details wrong about a historical event is a moral failing and that people who do it should be "damned to hell."

I'm mostly with the other incredulous people here, but alright. Let's say your username isn't trolly nonsense and you're deeper down the spectrum than I am, or the median mottizen is.

Put plainly, people really really really hate their enemies. Today's world is a little fraught, and people disagree on who this should be, but in any Western nation you'll find (at least) two groups that everyone really hates: nazis and pedophiles.

Nobody likes nazis. Depending on where you are you'll get taught more or less of who they were and what they were like, but everyone knows the big outlines. Swastikas, toothbrush stache man, holocaust, invading Poland, huzzah. To a median Westerner, the nazis wete evil losers, neo-nazis are evil losers, and they aren't interested in debating this. They have better stuff to do.

There are then two kinds of people who will go and doubt the dominant narrative about the Nazis anyway. The first are - obviously - their ideological descendants, who want to look good. The second kind of person is the sorts you'll readily find in here: the sorts who never got over being the smart kid in class. Reflexive contrarians who have never held a conventional opinion in life, because those are the normies' opinions and ohmygod they're so dumb.

A normal person, or even a smart one, isn't really going to notice or care for the distinction. They rightly know the Nazis killed millions of innocents. They rightly know national-socialist ideology is an evil one that has only brought misery to all those involved. They know this, they know their friends know this, they know their loved ones know this, they know every good person they agree with knows this. Every single one.

The people who loudly profess to disagree or question this are all, at the least, Nazi sympathisers. There's a lot of reflexive contrarians, but most of us have still the modicum of shame and social regard needed not to delve into holocaust denialism as the cause to espouse. Holocaust denier club isn't fifty truth-seekers with a couple Nazis around, it's fifty Nazis with a couple autistic kids who genuinely ought to seek their intellectual masturbation elsewhere.

The result is that the average person, or even a smart one like Prager, doesn't care to ponder just why someone might question the Holocaust. Not even the staunchly leftist atheists Prager hates like or will defend Nazis. No normal person will. But he knows that holocaust deniers fall into three rough groups: Nazis, smart people who should know better, and idiots who ought to listen to smarter sorts.

Does that help? Or are things still unclear to you?

I understand what you're saying, and I think we're at a point where my issue is no longer that I don't understand, but that I disagree. I don't mean that I disagree with what you're saying, but rather, that I disagree that this is acceptable behavior for public intellectuals. If Prager doesn't care to understand why people might question aspects of the Holocaust or how his behavior may do more to encourage Holocaust denial than discourage it, then he shouldn't write a column above the subject for both ethical and pragmatic reasons.

Also, the reasoning you've given for why people hate Nazis and the Nazi-adjacent certainly applies Prager, but I don't think it actually applies to most people, because if it did, they would hate communists as much as Nazis and respond to any attempt to rehabilitate Marx's image with the same anger they have towards anyone who they believe is trying to rehabilitate Hitler's image. Instead, Chapo Trap House has a best-selling book that was prominently displayed at my local library for over a year, with a favorable blurb by Tim Heidecker, the same person who thought Sam Hyde was too chummy with Nazis.

Communists are excepted not because of history, not quite, but because of the present.

Nazis are people nobody really personally knows. Insofar these are people you do know, they're skinhead degenerates and terrible people altogether - again, evil losers. Everything I said applies to Nazis because that's just who they are.

Communists aren't so rare. They appear in your library, you went to school with some, your child goes through a stupid phase, what have you. These people are, mostly, losers.. But not that evil about it. It's tough to be so viscerally hateful of communists when the median commie isn't a skinhead hooligan, but more of a weirdo who thinks society would be great if we'd just, like, learn to share, man.

Crucially, the people most likely to hate and revile communists as much as they do Nazis don't meet any in their regular lives - rural Americans. The median communist is irredeemably evil to them, because nobody close to them would ever think of adhering to such an evil ideology, much as with Nazis and anyone else.

You make a very good point, and I hate this because it should be a cause for people to recognize their own hypocrisy.

Why? They're not even really wrong. There are communists who are basically decent people. Nazis, not so much. A normal person might let a seventeen-year-old communist babysit their kids - a Nazi? Not a chance.

That sounds like prejudice on your part. Using pure logic, there is no reason for me to trust a communist other than Nazi, other than that because communism is more acceptable (even though it shouldn't be), it attracts people who are less psychologically deviant than white supremacy/fascism/National Socialism/etc.

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I have to say, the line from Hitler to Holocaust is much shorter than from Marx to the Holodomor. On that alone I think it’s more reasonable for people to want to rehabilitate Marx in broader society.

I think most Westerners would look askance about rehabilitating Stalin, though, and tankies who try are generally seen as lunatics.

I have to say, the line from Hitler to Holocaust is much shorter than from Marx to the Holodomor. On that alone I think it’s more reasonable for people to want to rehabilitate Marx in broader society.

You are wrong. Extermination of undesirables was one of Marx's explicit prescriptions.

I don't think the line from Marx to the Holodomor is pretty short. Seizing the means of production and having the government (euphemistically referred to as "the people") make all economic decisions inevitably leads to mass deaths. In my view, the only different between a socialist (in the original Marxist sense of the term) and a tankie is that a socialist believes if Snowball wasn't exiled, then Animal Farm would've worked, while a tankie believes Napoleon did nothing wrong. I think that Napoleon just accelerated an inevitable decay.

Even granting that Marxist rhetoric is violent in this way (which I’m hesitant to grant without significant qualifiers) surely you can see there is a difference between:

  1. A likely explicit order to exterminate a group of people when in paramount power, and

  2. A discussion of mass murder visited upon one’s political opponents, written not in any sort of office, which then was reinterpreted by various organisations decades after the death of the author, and in one case was perpetuated against a separate ethnic population, which was really not quite the point of the original texts (even if it was justified on those terms at the time).

In any case, it’s undeniable that Marx advocated for violent revolution, but I think there’s a qualitative difference between that and the sort of industrial murder machine created by the Nazis and the Japanese during WW2, as well as between advocacy and, well, actually doing the thing.

Okay, I'll agree with you that Marx isn't equivalent to Hitler, because he didn't actually do anything and only wrote about wanting other people to do things. But he's at least equivalent to.. oh, Richard Spencer.

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